


A Patchwork Family: Dreams

by Lbilover



Series: A Patchwork Family Series [6]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-14
Updated: 2017-01-14
Packaged: 2018-09-17 11:39:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9321935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lbilover/pseuds/Lbilover
Summary: A walk on a snowy day brings memories and the easing of a sorrow.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Based on Loreena McKennitt’s beautiful and haunting song ‘Snow’. Lyrics can be found [here](http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/loreenamckennitt/snow.html). I'm not sure I did it justice, but I tried.

_Afteryule, 1421_

Frodo remembers clearly the first time he walked the lanes and fields around Hobbiton during a rare heavy winter snowfall in the Shire. It had been the January after he left Buckland and gone to live permanently with Bilbo at Bag End.

Frodo had had no inclination that long-ago morning to venture outside when he woke to find snow tapping softly at the windowpanes as if inviting him to come out and play. Instead, after breakfast Frodo had settled on the rug in front of the fire in his bedchamber with a book spread open on his lap and a mug of hot tea beside him.

Though he can no longer recall the title of the book he had borrowed from Bilbo’s study, he can vividly recall the blissful sensation of sitting snug and warm in a room of his very own and reading to his heart’s content. He had rarely enjoyed such a luxury in the crowded rabbit warren that was Brandy Hall.

But then, just as he’d become engrossed in his tale…

_“Come along, Frodo-lad,” Bilbo said, bustling into the room. “It’s time for our walk.”_

_To Frodo’s surprise, Bilbo was wearing the old travel-stained green cloak that he so cherished from the days of his Adventure. In his arms he was carrying Frodo’s own cloak: dark blue and warmly lined with fur. The cloak had been a gift from Bilbo, and a dear gift in more ways than one: Frodo could not remember ever owning anything half so fine before._

_“You don’t really mean to go out in that, Bilbo,” Frodo protested, marking the page in his book with a ribbon and closing it with some reluctance. He didn’t wish to trade the cozy warmth of his bedroom for the snowy cold of the out-of-doors. He gestured toward the window, which was rapidly “being covered in a coating of white. “It’s still snowing!”_

_“Of course I mean to!” Bilbo retorted, though his eyes were twinkling. “There is nothing more enjoyable than a tramp on a snowy day. You’ll see, my boy.”_

Bilbo had been right, as he usually was.

***

Now, Frodo walks through softly falling snow along those same familiar lanes and fields with Huan at his side, while he pictures Bilbo in Rivendell, napping and dreaming away the hours in the Hall of Fire or his small room that opens onto the autumn-tinged gardens.

But this day with its steel-grey sky and hushed silence might be that long ago day that he and Bilbo had set out from Bag End into a Shire transformed by a blanket of purest white. Such rare sounds as there are- the low of cattle in a byre, or the barking of a farm dog as he goes about his tasks- carry clear across the fields yet seem oddly remote, as if they are but echoes from the distant past. If he turns his head quickly enough, Frodo imagines he might catch a glimpse of Bilbo at his elbow, his nose and cheeks pink with cold and his eyes sparkling with delight as only the eyes of Bilbo Baggins can.

_“Aren’t you glad now that you came, Frodo-lad?” Bilbo asked, when they had paused to admire a stand of fir-trees crowned in silver-white, and to watch a curl of pale grey smoke from the chimney of a distant farmhouse drift slowly into the sky._

_“Yes,” Frodo admitted. “Yes, I am. It’s so beautiful, Bilbo.” He groped for words. “Not that the Shire isn’t always beautiful, of course, but this… it’s different somehow.”_

_Bilbo smiled in understanding, and set a hand on Frodo’s shoulder. “The closest to true Elvishness our Shire will ever come, my boy. If you close your eyes and listen to the silence, you can almost hear the music of Ilúvatar, and imagine yourself to be standing in the very heart of Elvenhome.”_

Frodo _had_ closed his eyes and listened, and perhaps it had only been his fancy, but he had seemed to hear the sweet music of flutes and harps swirling among the falling snow. He had dreamed with a thrill of anticipation of one day visiting the Elves, or going off on an adventure with Bilbo. And in later years, when he walked alone across the snow-covered fields, he had listened for the music and dreamed of setting off on the road to find the old hobbit he loved so dearly.

But never had he envisioned the strange and unexpected shape that dream would take, or the terrible circumstances under which he would at last be swept off his feet and set down on the road. Nor had he imagined that he, Frodo Baggins, hobbit of the Shire, “would one day walk with Sam in the very heart of Elvenhome in Middle-earth, among the mallorn-trees of Lothlórien, lovely even in her winter.

Frodo can now understand fully the meaning of Bilbo’s words that long ago day. He casts back the hood of his grey cloak and turns his face up toward the sky. He closes his eyes and in the perfect crystalline stillness once more fancies that he can hear faint sweet music twisting and dancing among the snowflakes that touch his skin, feather-light but burning with cold.

The sound no longer fills him with an inchoate longing for adventure and distant lands, however. Frodo has changed, and so have his dreams.

_The bathing chamber is suffused with flickering golden light from the several candles Sam has lit. The air feels balmy, warm and moist from the tendrils of steam that rise from the shining copper tub filled nearly to the brim with hot water. Frodo breathes appreciatively of the fragrant herbs that Sam has used to scent the water: chamomile, linden and the precious jasmine they’d brought back with them from the south._

_Sam has been tut-tutting ever since he met Frodo at the front door when he and Huan returned from their walk in the snow. “You’re like to catch your death one of these days,” he mutters, shaking his head as he helps Frodo out of his brown velvet jacket. “The Lady made your cloak with a hood for a reason, Frodo. Look at you: your hair’s wet through, and your fingers are like ice. You went off without your mittens again,” he scolds as he folds the jacket and drapes it over the back of a chair. “And goodness’ knows you’ve enough pairs.”_

_“Guilty as charged,” Frodo jests, drawing a look from Sam. “But I’ll be fine, my dear.” Frodo’s hands go to his buttons as if to prove the nimbleness of his fingers, though in truth they tingle with returning warmth and feel clumsy at the task, but then Sam is there, shaking his head and saying in a tone that “brooks no argument, “I’ll do that.” First he eases the suspenders from Frodo’s shoulders, letting them fall to his sides, and then his fingers reach for the top button of Frodo’s soft blue shirt._

_“Sam, I can undress myself,” Frodo protests mildly, but his heart gives a small leap at the smile that quirks Sam’s lips. The use of some of their dwindling store of jasmine, the gently teasing smile… he knows now that Sam has more in mind than a simple bath, and his breath grows short as if he has been running up a hillside._

_“You can, but that don’t mean you have to,” Sam comments, the smile growing as he deftly works down the row of horn buttons, and parts Frodo’s shirt with reverent hands. “You are so beautiful, Frodo Baggins,” he whispers._

How long Frodo stands there lost in dreams while the snow drifts down onto and around him, he isn’t certain, but he startles back to awareness when something cold and wet nudges his bare calf. His eyes fly open and he looks down to see Huan regarding him with a question in his bright dark eyes. _Isn’t it time we were heading home?_

There is a light dusting of snow on the scarlet wool of the coat Huan wears, dimming the vivid colour, and the pewter grey fur on his head and neck is turning dark with wetness. Behind the clouds, the sun is low on the horizon, and the shadows are beginning to lengthen.

“I’m sorry, Huan,” Frodo says apologetically. “Goodness, just look at you! We’d best get home before you’re covered from top to tail.” Then he laughs when Huan as if in reply gives a vigorous shake and sends the glittering powder flying.

They set out with quick steps across the field, an unbroken expanse of white, and only the footprints they leave behind them are proof that any life exists at all in this snow-shrouded world. At the far end of the field is a stile that leads to the lane and the road home. It’s slick with snow; Frodo holds on tightly to the slippery wet wood as he carefully climbs over it. Huan, with the effortless grace of an Elf, leaps lightly up to the top of the wall beside the stile, gathers himself briefly, and vaults down into the lane, where he waits for his less agile master to join him.

The faint rhythmic jingle of bells catches at Frodo’s ear as they hurry up the lane below the bare outstretched arms of the trees. The jingling grows louder and closer with each passing moment. Frodo is reminded of Glorfindel and Asfaloth, and the terrifying flight to the Ford: but the memory holds no fear for him now.

He moves to the side of the lane with Huan just as a sleigh drawn by a high stepping chestnut pony sweeps into view around a bend in the road. The brass bells attached to the pony’s harness chime loudly as he trots, hooves flinging snow to left and right, and white clouds of steam issue from his flared red nostrils with every snorting breath. The gaily-painted sleigh rocks slightly as the runners hiss through the snow, and as it nears, Frodo can see that there are two hobbits seated in it.

Holding the reins in his gloved hands is Rollo Bracegirdle, his dark curls crowned by a dashing fur hat, and a woolen muffler tied jauntily around his neck. Sitting close beside him, a fur rug across her lap, is Rosie Cotton. She is laughing merrily as she holds onto Rollo’s arm with her mittened hands, and the cloud of her long hair, only partially confined by her yellow hat, blows about her. She looks happy and utterly alive.

This is not the first time that Frodo has seen the pair together, and though he pays little heed to gossip in the general way, he has paid attention to the rumours that the well-to-do Rollo, a distant cousin of Frodo’s, has been courting old Tom Cotton’s lovely daughter. It does indeed seem that such rumours are well founded, and a sudden lightness settles over Frodo’s heart as softly as the falling snow.

He has wished Rosie only well, and has truly grieved for her grief. If Frodo’s dreams have taken the most strange and unexpected turns, so too have hers; the memory of her dark eyes following Sam with sorrow and bewilderment has haunted him. But there is no going back for either him or Sam, not now or ever, and Rosie’s dreams, like so many, have had to be put aside. But Frodo is doubly glad, therefore, to rejoice at her newfound dreams, and he hopes, as he stares at her lovely, laughing face, that they will always bring her joy. 

Rollo and Rosie do not see Frodo as the sled rushes past in a whirlwind of colour and sound; they are too absorbed in each other to notice the slender grey-clad figure standing at the side of the lane or the bright splash of scarlet that is the small whippet beside him. And Frodo is glad of it. Such a winter walk is meant for dreams and memories, and it belongs to him and Huan alone.

Pony and sleigh hurtle on inexorably down the lane, drawing away. The last thing Frodo glimpses before the sleigh rounds a curve and disappears from view is the mass of Rosie’s light brown curls streaming on the wind.

The musical chime of the bells gradually fades and dies, and the snow-hushed silence settles around hobbit and dog once more. Frodo looks down at Huan: he is wearing that quizzical expression again, head tilted to one side. “I know,” Frodo says, “Sam will start to worry if we don’t turn up soon.”

As they wend their way homeward, the snow around them turning all to silver-grey in the twilight, Frodo is certain that he can hear once more, piercing and sweet, the music of Ilúvatar. But it is not of Elvenhome or of Rivendell or of Lothlórien that Frodo dreams as he walks through the gathering dusk. It is of Bag End, and of the one who will be waiting at the door for their return.

~end~


End file.
